In Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, families filter in and out of Hoffy’s kosher restaurant cheerfully, making conversation with friends and neighbors as they look over the takeaway options at the front of the shop.
But for all the buzz and the delicious-looking spread, chef Moishy Hoffman is downbeat. “I am ashamed of what’s behind that glass,” he said.
A ban on kosher and halal slaughter without first stunning an animal has meant he now struggles to source fresh kosher meat and often has to resort to frozen cuts imported from outside Belgium. The EU’s highest court ruled back in December that member countries may enact legislation on animal welfare grounds following a move by Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region of Flanders to bring in a ban (subsequently followed by French-speaking Wallonia).
That ruling threw the ball back to Belgium’s constitutional court, which earlier this month rejected an appeal from those arguing that the ban impinges on religious freedom.
The Jewish community is already feeling the pinch. “You go to the butcher here and see empty, empty, empty counters,” Hoffman said. “Sometimes they give me 10 steaks. I need 60 or 70, and I have 10. What is 10? Nothing. I need a filet de canard, I don’t have it. Lamb, we don’t have it.”
Yohan Benizri, head of the Coordination Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), said he doesn’t believe the ban was put in place to deliberately harm the Jewish community, but the fact that Jews were affected didn’t seem particularly to bother anyone, either.
“You do something like that and your intention is probably just animal welfare or political gain,” he said, “but you’re sending a signal that ‘we don’t really care about Jews. We don’t care about their customs, we don’t care about their traditions.’”
He said the Jewish population in Belgium — around half of the 42,000 or so live in Antwerp — has been more or less managing by importing kosher meat from other countries. But he’s concerned that more bans will follow in the rest of the EU. “It’s not a theoretical issue, it’s something that’s spreading like cancer,” he said, adding, “You already have enough to worry about as a Jew in Europe.”
Dominiek Lootens-Stael is a member of the parliament of the Brussels-Capital region for Vlaams Belang, the far-right political party that originally proposed the ban, with the support of Belgian animal welfare organizations. He argued that “in Western European civilization, there is no place [for slaughter without stunning].”
Lootens-Stael said fear of being branded racist had kept Belgium’s animal rights organizations from supporting a ban on the practice in both Jewish and Muslim communities sooner.
When asked about claims that a ban amounts to a cultural infringement, he said “there are other ways to express your religious beliefs … When we make legislation, it’s for everyone.”
Though the legal arguments against ritual slaughter were based on animal welfare, the political debate around it has been broader, with suspicions that the far-right has used it as a Trojan horse for an anti-Islam agenda. The population of Muslims in Belgium is around 15 times higher than the Jewish community, making up around 6 percent of the total.
Ari Mandel, owner of Kosher4u.eu, a Belgian-based European supplier for kosher food, is less concerned with the intentions of the ban and more worried about its actual outcomes.
“We’re facing a very, very big and problematic issue,” he said. “I would say 90 percent of meat in town is frozen, not fresh. We’re losing customers.” He said two kosher butchers have already been forced to close, while others are struggling.
Brexit and the pandemic had already impacted Kosher supply chains, and Mandel says the ban has worsened an already difficult situation.
“If you want to say Jewish people are not welcome here, just say it. If you don’t explicitly say they’re not welcome, but you take measures to push them out, it’s really the same message,” he said.
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